Month: November 2025

Mayan “elderly lord” marker found in Yucatán 

Ancient

A salvage excavation along the route of the Maya Train project have uncovered a limestone carving of an anthropomorphic face with features characteristic of an “elderly lord” dating to the Maya Preclassic period (2500 B.C.-200 A.D.) in the small community of Sierra Papacal, 25 miles from Yucatán’s capital city of Mérida.

It is approximately 45 cm (17.7 inches) high and depicts a human-like face with deep eye sockets, a flat nose, and lips marked by a cleft that emphasizes the pronounced chin. These features typically represent an elder figure. The sculpture was found outside an ovoid structure about 5.8 by 4.3 meters (19 x 14 feet) in dimension with double walls made of limestone blocks. The entrance is 80 cm (31.5 inches) wide and faces the western sun. It is flanked by large rocks acting as door jambs and the thick wall indicates there may have been an interior bench.

The sculpture was found behind the north jamb between the thick wall next to the bench area. This placement was very deliberate, a means to signal entrance to a restricted area. The means the structure is not a domestic building. INAH archaeologists believe it was used for ritual or communal purposes — community meetings or ceremonies — and there were several phases of construction and occupation. The placement of the statue suggests it served as a marker or to welcome people to the space.

This sculptural marker of the elderly lord is not an isolated object but a key component of an architectural complex intended for specific and high-ranking community activities. Its discovery will decisively contribute to supporting comparative analyses, offering a more precise approach that will help to understand the use of space and the nature of the activities carried out in these architectural complexes, shedding new light on the socio-political and religious practices of the ancient Maya of the Preclassic period in northwestern Yucatán.

Four early medieval spears found in Lake Lednica

Medieval

Four early medieval spears, including one so finely decorated that it could be of princely origin, have been recovered from the bed of Lake Lednica. Dendrological analysis and radiocarbon dating found that the spears date to the second half of the 10th and first half of the 11th century.

A Piast dynasty stronghold was located on Ostrów Lednicki, an island on Lake Lednica. More than 280 military artifacts, including 145 axes, 64 spearheads, and 8 swords, from the reigns of Piast dynasty kings Mieszko I (r. ca. 960-992) and Bolesław the Brave (992-1025) have been recovered from the lake bed, the largest collection of early medieval weaponry ever discovered at a single site.

Scientists have two leading theories as to why so many weapons ended up in the lake. They may have fallen into the lake during the battles for the Lednica stronghold, fought on the bridges during the invasion of Poland by the Czech prince Bretislaus in the 1130s. The second hypothesis, a ritual one, posits that the weapons were placed in the water as an offering to deities or spirits.

“Such practices are known from earlier periods in many places in Europe. Water was perceived as a gateway to the world of the dead, and throwing a valuable object into it was a gesture with profound symbolic meaning. It is possible that the arsenal gathered at the bottom of the lake is an echo of both turbulent historical events and ancient beliefs,” the [Museum of the First Piasts in Lednica] said.

The four spears discovered this season are very different from each other and have their own unique features. The smallest spearhead is rhomboidal in shape and was found still mounted to its wooden shaft. The shaft is made of ash and survives in several pieces totalling approximately 2.1 meters (6’11”) in length. Only two spears from Lake Lednica have such a well-preserved shaft, and they are longer exceeding three meters in length. The tip has a ring made of antler, a feature never found before in a medieval spear.

The second spearhead is longer and slender and is shaped like a willow leaf, a common design in early medieval weaponry. It too has a section of surviving shaft. The spearhead is decorated with a serpentine line of wolf teeth on both sides. Several examples of spearheads of this type have been found in Lake Lednica, indicating they may have been manufactured locally.

The third spearhead is the longest of the four and has a triangular profile. It was made using a welded technique that repeatedly forged together soft, low-carbon iron alloys with hard, high-carbon alloys for added strength. This was the apex of combat forging technology in Europe at the time. It too is decorated with the wolf teeth design. Only a few fragments of the wooden shaft have survived.

The fourth is the most spectacular of them all. It is decorated along the blade with spiral and triskelion motifs and set in a socket that is decorated with the same motifs. There are wings decorated with braided designs mounted to the socket. The ends are pointed, and may represent stylized claws or beaks. Rows of small dots fill in the space between the woven braid edges. The remnants of bronze plating are still visible, but researchers found traces of no fewer than six metals in the spearhead: silver, gold, copper, tin, zinc, lead and alloys thereof. Three examples of spears with similar ornamentation have been found in the lake, but none of them have this specimen’s incredible panoply of precious metals. This is so exceptional an object that it may have been the insignia of royalty or nobility rather than a use weapon, or perhaps had a ritual purpose.

The discovered artifacts, especially the richly decorated princely spearhead, require further research. This will help determine the production technology. Isotope analyses of selected metals found on the princely spear are also planned to determine their origin, which could help determine the origin of this prestigious item.

When conservation is complete, the spearheads will go on display at the Museum of the First Piast Dynasty in Lednica.

Rare marble portrait of scandal-plagued Victorian lady barred from leaving UK

Modern(ish)

UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport has placed a temporary export bar on a rare double portrait of Victorian sisters by Henri-Joseph François, Baron De Triqueti. The decision gives a UK institution until February 13, 2026, to acquire the piece for the recommended price of £280,000.

The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest (RCEWA) recommended the bar because the double portrait is unique in Triqueti’s oeuvre and of “outstanding significance to the study of Triqueti’s sources, work practices, patronage networks, and the commissioning of medallion portraits by English families. It was also of outstanding significance to the study of the role of Victorian women and to development of estate management ideas.”

The son of a wealthy Piedmontese diplomat, Triqueti received a thorough classical education and had a deep knowledge of an appreciation for Greco-Roman and Renaissance art and architecture. Trained as a painter, he was an avid art collector and in his own work revived Classical and Renaissance techniques like chryselephantine sculpture, portrait medallions and colorful pictorial marble/stone inlay reinvented for modern tastes.

Triqueti began his career creating ornamental sculptures, and quickly rose to prominence receiving important commissions. He was 30 years old and had only been sculpting for four years when he was commissioned to make the monumental bronze doors of the Madeleine in Paris in 1834. The dramatic doors, four times taller than Lorenzo Ghiberti’s famed Doors of Paradise on the Florence Baptistery and twice the size of the doors of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, earned him a position as a royal sculptor for King Louis-Philippe.

After the overthrow of the July Monarchy in the 1848 Revolution, Triqueti moved to England where he found new aristocratic patrons. His wife, Julia Forster, was the daughter of the chaplain to Henry Wellesley, 1st Earl Cowley, future British Ambassador in Paris. Cowley and his brother Gerald Wellesley, Dean of Windsor, commissioned several sculptures and bas reliefs and introduced his work to the highest echelons of society. Queen Victoria herself bought sculptures from Triqueti, gifting his ivory Sappho and Cupid to her beloved husband Prince Albert for his birthday in 1852. After his premature death in 1861, she commissioned Triqueti to design Prince Albert’s cenotaph and later the intricate inlaid marble wall panels and reliefs that adorned the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The double portrait of Florence and Alice Campbell was Triqueti’s version of an imago clipeata, a portrait on a round shield that in ancient Rome was used to depict images of honored ancestors, deities and famous people. They inspired the Renaissance tondo painting or sculpture. Triqueti’s innovation was to take the flat round medallion-like background of antiquity and transform it into a deep concave shape.

It is hoped that the acquisition of the work by a UK institution may allow further study, unlocking more insights into the artist’s methods and practices. Triqueti’s work also presents an enticing opportunity for the further study of Victorian women.

The sculpture’s focus are young sisters, Florence and Alice Campbell. It was commissioned by the girls’ father, Robert Tertius Campbell, an Australian businessman who is credited with introducing innovative agricultural techniques to his Oxfordshire estate, Buscot Park.

Robert Campbell was the son of merchant who made a fortune in gold and moved his large family to England in 1852. He poured money into climbing the social ladder, buying several country estates and city mansions and getting his kids lessons in the aristocratic pursuits. In 1857, he engaged a sculptor favored by Queen Victoria to make a portrait of two of his daughters.

One of the daughters in the portrait, Florence, started out following her father’s general plan with a big society wedding to a dashing British military officer in 1864 when she was 19. The marriage faltered out of the gate. Her husband was a chronically unfaithful abusive alcoholic and they finally separated seven years after their lavish wedding, over her father’s objections. He died a few weeks after their official separation from an alcohol-fueled episode of vomiting blood.

Her father would soon come to yearn for something as simple as the separation he called “morally offensive.” Florence began an affair with the doctor they had sent her to in the attempt to “cure” her desire to divorce her husband. He was a quack to Victorian luminaries like Benjamin Disraeli and Florence Nightingale. She was 25; he was 62. And married. The death of her husband left her independently wealthy, so her father’s threats to cut her off fell on deaf ears, and she dove into the affair, to the point that she was caught having sex with him in the drawing room of her solicitor’s house, exposing herself to such venomous gossip that she was ostracized by society, her family and even shopkeepers who refused to supply such a scandalous household.

The affair finally ended after she had an abortion and almost died. Florence remarried to Charles Bravo, an age-appropriate barrister in 1875. This marriage too was an absolute disaster. He tried to control her money, isolate her from her friends, teamed up with his mother to stop her traveling, threatened suicide, hit her and insisted she get pregnant again right after a miscarriage. Five months after their wedding, he died in great abdominal pain. The post mortem found the cause of death was antimony poisoning.

Enter scandal number three. Now the gossip was about Florence having potentially poisoned her husband, and of course, all the past gossip about her separation from her first husband and her affair with the doctor old enough to be her grandfather came bubbling back up in the tabloids. She had to testify for three days at a second inquest, fielding questions about her past sex scandal. In the end, there was zero evidence she had anything to do with the poisoning, and a decent amount of evidence that her husband had done it to himself, but the stain was indelible and ruined her life. She sold her house, fled London, moved to a secluded place in the country where she became a virtual shut-in and drank herself to death at the age of 33.

The Charles Bravo case was such a huge scandal that it was still subject of conversation in three Agatha Christie stories a century after events, Ordeal by Innocence (1958), The Clocks (1963) and Elephants Can Remember (1972).

Bronze Age log coffin readied for display

Ancient, Museums

After years of conservation and reconstruction, the massive Bronze Age log coffin discovered during work on the water trap at Tetney Golf Course in East Lindsey in 2018 has been transported to its new permanent home at the Lincoln Museum where it will go on public display for the first time.

Carved from the trunk of an oak tree approximately 4,000 years ago, the coffin contained the remains of a relatively tall man (5’9″) who was in his late 30s or early 40s when he died. Osteological examination of his bones revealed osteoarthritis from a lifetime of heavy physical labor. He was buried with a miniature battle axe with a stone head still mounted to its complete wooden handle in like-new condition.

The coffin in 10 feet long, but was broken into several pieces when it was discovered in the muddy soil. The largest piece is almost eight feet long and weighs half a ton. To preserve it from rapid drying and crumbling to dust after its discovery exposed it to air, the pieces were placed in cold storage at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth for a year. They were then transported to the York Archaeological Trust for stabilization, conservation and reconstruction.

Further analysis and research was led by a team of independent specialists, with the coffin providing a precious glimpse into elaborate Bronze Age burial practices.

An investigation of the plant and pollen remains found inside the coffin revealed that the man was laid on a bed of oak and yew branches and had a garland of flowers around his neck. Hazelnuts and other plants may have formed part of a food offering.

The Tetney Coffin was moved to Lincoln Museum last week. Museum conservators are now reading the coffin for display, stabilizing it in its new space and creating a custom support structure for its long-term exhibition.

The Lincoln Museum closed in October 2024 for a wide-ranging redevelopment. Every artifact on display was removed to safe storage to make way for a complete redesign of the archaeology gallery. The new gallery will feature interactive displays that will give visitors an immersive, hands-on experience of Lincolnshire’s history and pre-history. The Tetney Coffin will be the flagship attraction of the museum’s renewed archaeology gallery when it reopens next year.

Viking woman buried with scallop shells cupping her mouth

Medieval

Archaeologists have unearthed a 9th century skeleton in Trøndelag, Norway, buried with two scallop shells on each side of the mouth. This feature is completely unique on the Norwegian archaeological record. The only other possible examples are scallop shell fragments discovered in seven or eight graves in western Norway more than a century ago, and they were so small and scattered they could have been natural parts of the sandy soil.

The grave was very shallow, just 15-20 cm (6-8 inches) below the surface. It had been damaged when a ditch was dug across the foot of the grave in the 60s or 70s, but only the legs of the skeleton were harmed. The rest of the skeleton was preserved, albeit under threat from the increasingly acidic soil and from agricultural work which continues on the private land.

The deceased was likely a married woman of high status, as evidenced by the presence of a pair of large oval cup brooches in the grave. They were used to fasten the shoulder straps on a woman’s halter dress. There was also a small ring brooch that was used to close the gap in her petticoat.

Small bones from birds, likely the remains of wings, were found around the skeleton. Archaeologists believe the bird wings may have been sewn to a garment or blanket and the bones are all that’s left of it. Another possibility is that she was laid to rest on a bed of feathered wings not attached to a textile. Bird wing remains have been found in an ancient grave in Norway before, but they were in a cremation burial that was found to contain wing parts from 29 different birds.

“The most striking thing is two scallops placed at the mouth of the deceased. This is a practice that is not previously known from pre-Christian graves in Norway. We do not yet know what the symbolism means,” says [NTNU Science Museum senior engineer Raymond] Sauvage, who is also the project manager for the research.

The shells were lying with the curved side out and the straight edge up, so they partially covered the mouth.

A second skeleton from the 8th or 9th centuries was found just 30 feet away from the scallop lady earlier this year. Archaeologists will test both skeletons for DNA to see if they’re related. Stable isotope analysis will shed light on whether they were of local origins or spent their childhoods somewhere else.